Each candidate's goal: Get the other guy to bleed out in the cash department before the June primary.

Westly, the state controller who made a fortune as a top executive of eBay, kicked off the game a couple of weeks back when he hit the airwaves with a $1.2 million-a-week, feel-good TV spot introducing himself to voters.

Not to be caught flat-footed, Treasurer Angelides countered with a spot featuring the on-camera endorsement of Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Now Westly has come back with two more -- and the race for face is on.

The question is, which candidate can keep it up?

There are about 12 weeks to go until the June primary. Angelides has an estimated $15 million to $17 million in the bank -- and he's already spending nearly $500,000 a month just to pay staff and keep the lights on in his campaign office.

Westly, on the other hand, who has funded his campaign largely from his past eBay earnings, expects to report $24 million on hand in his next filing -- including a $2.5 million check that he just anted up himself as a sign he intends to go for broke.

"You do the math," said Westly campaign strategist Garry South. "Unless Angelides is going to put in some of his own money, how can he keep spending like that?"

Wishful thinking, insists Angelides campaign manager Cathy Calfo. She says her candidate has a 22,000-strong donor base -- and they are far from tapped out.

"We will be able to raise the money we need for television to stay on the air to the end and deliver Phil's message," she said.

Meanwhile, Arnold just watches from the sidelines without spending a dime -- or getting a scratch.

Phone probe: The attorney for two women who say Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown crushed one of their cell phones and made disparaging remarks outside a downtown nightclub has challenged the mayor to take a lie detector test.

"We will be satisfied with the results," said attorney Joe O'Sullivan, who is representing Ayesha Wilson and her friend in a complaint filed with the police.

"Sounds like a lot of hype," shot back Brown spokesman Gil Duran, who dismissed the women's complaint as "one of those finger-in-the-chili deals" -- a reference to the couple who planted a digit in Wendy's finest.

This is all about what happened when the mayor accompanied Oakland cops on their rounds to "babysit" a number of nightclubs in the wee hours last Sunday. Outside one, the @Seventeenth Club off Telegraph Avenue, they encountered two groups of women who had gotten into a melee.

Wilson says she was trying to get help for a friend who had been hit with a shoe when Brown called out from behind her, "That is what happens when you come to a place like this."

Wilson, who is African American, says she told the mayor his remarks were racist and fascist. When he later made similar comments to her friend Latrenia Delonge, Wilson says, she flipped open her cell phone and started to videotape him. When he walked away, she followed him -- at which point, she says, "he got frustrated and squeezed my cell phone until it broke."

Brown has been mum about the incident, but his spokesman is anything but.

"It doesn't make sense to waste the mayor's time with stunts from people who are looking for some kind of payday," Duran said. "These women were drunk and being ejected from the club at the time."

Bunk, said Wilson, "That wasn't us -- we weren't drunk. I don't drink at all."

What's more, she said she's only fighting the mayor out of principle. "I don't want any money -- that's a misconception," she said.

In any event, the case has been turned over to the Alameda County district attorney for review. O'Sullivan says he intends to turn over the smashed phone to D.A.'s investigators Monday in hopes they might lift fingerprints off it -- though apparently the phone was widely handled after the alleged incident.

O'Sullivan says Wilson and Delonge deserve better than they're getting from the mayor.

"These are nice girls -- not gang bangers," O'Sullivan said.

Sacramento Niners: The San Francisco 49ers could own an Arena Football League team by month's end -- and it's likely to be in Oakland or Sacramento.

"We do have rights to exercise our option to an arena football team by April 1," 49ers spokesman Aaron Sorkin confirmed last week.

Five years ago, then-rookie 49ers owners John and Denise York plunked down an undisclosed deposit for an option to buy into the still-fledgling arena league. Now it's time to pay and play -- or lose that deposit.

The current asking price for a new arena franchise is about $20 million. But the Niners, under their pre-existing agreement, would probably wind up paying less than $5 million.

As for where the team will play, the official line from Arena Football League spokesman Chris McCloskey is that San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento are all on the table. (San Jose is already taken, thanks to the Sabercats.)

The Sacramento Business Journal reports that the Niners are in serious discussions to have their team play at Sacramento's Arco Arena as early as 2008.

Those following the talks, however, say the Oakland Arena -- home to the NBA's Golden State Warriors -- is also very much in play.

Jed York, son of the owners, told the Sacramento Business Journal that the 49ers would prefer to have an arena team in San Francisco, but that the city doesn't have a first-class arena. The Cow Palace in Daly City, which seats anywhere 10,300 to 16,500, remains an option -- but apparently only for the short term, and only if plans are on the books for a new San Francisco arena.